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268 'I agree with you,' Trent remarked in a colourless tone.

'And,' pursued the lady, looking up at him with a mild reasonableness in her eyes, 'as I knew that he was innocent I was not going to expose him to that risk.'

There was another little pause. Trent rubbed his chin, with an affectation of turning over the idea. Inwardly he was telling himself, somewhat feebly, that this was very right and proper; that it was quite feminine, and that he liked her to be feminine. It was permitted to her–more than permitted–to set her loyal belief in the character of a friend above the clearest demonstrations of the intellect. Nevertheless, it chafed him. He would have had her declaration of faith a little less positive in form. It was too irrational to say she 'knew'. In fact (he put it to himself bluntly), it was quite unlike her. If to be unreasonable when reason led to the unpleasant was a specially feminine trait, and if Mrs. Manderson had it, she was accustomed to wrap it up better than any woman he had known.

'You suggest,' he said at length, 'that Marlowe constructed an alibi for himself, by